Landing In London
by Unoriginality
Summary: <html><head></head>Edward woke up in London, and couldn't understand what he was doing there.</html>


_I woke up today in London_

_As the plane was touching down_

_And all I could think about was Monday_

_And maybe I'll be back around_

-"Landing in London"; Three Doors Down

They think he's still in shock, Edward figures, lying still and staring at the ceiling as his father and the doctor speak on the other side of the room. Maybe he is, he can't tell; is that what the numb feeling that was settling over him was? It's blocking out his awareness, reducing his world down to a single thought, a single focus.

He can't feel Al anymore.

The words of his father and the doctor are muffled against his tunnel-vision perception, and he vaguely processes that the doctor is asking his father about a cult, and an attack, and what are they talking about?

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Hohenheim shake his head. "It's possible, I suppose. I've not heard of any other such attacks though."

It dawns on Edward, past the suffocating feeling of a broken contact with his brother, a connection that he'd never been without, not when the Gate took Alphonse's body as toll, not when his brother used the last of the Stone and disappeared, and Edward had woken up to an empty stage with Rosè and Wrath as the only audience members, that the two men must be talking about his injuries.

A cult attack? Hardly. He put the arrays there himself, carved them into his own skin; they're not signs of magical garbage, they're alchemy, science, sacrifice written in a language Edward knows better than the one he speaks.

He can't say that, of course, not here, now can he?

Here. London. God, what is he doing here again? How? The Gate should've taken him, returned Al to the land of the living in his place. He should be waiting in some sort of limbo for Al to be able to do what he didn't know how to do on his own, to fix the mess he'd made.

He shouldn't be here.

Dimly, he hopes, despite the dead feeling in his soul where Al should be, that maybe, maybe he'd inadvertently pulled Al through with him, and that his baby brother is sitting out in the hall, waiting while their father and the doctor talk, worried about him.

"Al?" he croaks weakly, hopefully, and there's the sound of footsteps, and then his father is leaning over him. He finally turns his gaze from the fixed point on the ceiling he'd been staring at to look at the man, waiting, silently begging him to tell him something he wanted to hear, to tell him the pain in his chest is just leftover from his own death.

"Rest, Edward," Hohenheim tells him, reaching out a hand and brushing back his hair, and Edward wants to cry, tears up and struggles to breathe at the unspoken answer in his father's expression.

He whimpers his brother's name again, voice cracking and breaking over the sound. He can't feel his heartbeat anymore. Somehow, he thinks that dying the first time hurt less.

"I'll return tomorrow," the doctor says, somewhere far away, and Hohenheim nods, says his thanks and bids him goodbye. 'Tomorrow'? There's actually a tomorrow, another day, a future at _all_ when Al is no longer there, no longer there with him, is _gone_?

The shock must've worn off, he realizes with some detached interest, as his breath curdles in his throat, a keening _wail_ working out from his heart and he's not even fully sure that he actually made the sound, or if it's just the deafening silence of his soul dying that he can't hear past.

Hohenheim's weight settles on the bed and the older man gathers him up into his arms; it's the first time Edward's been there, held by his father like a little boy, in years. His arm wraps around the older man, clinging desperately for solid ground, and he sobs in frustration at the lack of response from his missing arm, at his inability to even hold on for dear life fully.

His father says something, something surely meant to be comforting; he ignores it, and whatever it was, the words are lost and fall on deaf ears. There is no comfort, nothing could make this better or even just okay.

Al is gone.


End file.
